My government name is Mack Gallagher. Crocker’s Rules. I am an “underfunded” “alignment” “researcher”. DM me if you’d like to fund my posts, or my project.
I post some of my less-varnished opinions on my Substack.
Lorec
Karma: 227
Oh gosh, how irksome if Magic neurotypes its players like that.
Sirlin writes only of denial of one’s weakness, not of a “need to lose”.
. . . Wow, if that Rizzo piece is representative of how channer bicamerals were handling their internal conflicts before Ziz, I understand Ziz a little better.
Isn’t losing just what you need to do to increase your ability to win? Other than the elements of what Rizzo writes about that are obviously just the activation of simian instincts to end a conflict by submitting, that is [ which is a lot of it ].
I was talking with some people yesterday whom I accused of competing to espouse middling p(doom)s. One of them was talking about Aaronson’s Faust parameter [ i.e. the p(doom), assuming “everything goes perfect” if ¬doom, at which you press the button and release superintelligent AI right now ]. And they had what I think was a good question: In what year do we foresee longevity escape velocity, assuming the AInotkilleveryoneist agenda succeeds and superintelligence is forestalled for decades?
The appropriate countervailing challenge question is: What is one plausible story for how a by-chance friendly ASI invents immortality within two years or whatever of its creation, while staying harmless to humanity? What is the tech tree, how does it traverse this tree and what are the guardrails keeping it from going off on some exciting [ what is effectively to a human ] pathology-gain-of-function tangent along the way?
In the rate-limiting resource, housing, the poor have indeed gotten poorer. Treating USD as a wealth primitive [ not to mention treating “demand” as a game-theoretic primitive ] is an economist-brained error.
Coins are easier to model quasi-deterministically than humans, is the point Jonnan was making. [ I don’t think they [Jonnan] realize how many people miss this fact. ]
Well, we’re assuming Omega wants more money rather than less, aren’t we?
If it’s sufficiently omniscient to predict us, a much more complicated type of thing than a coin, what reason would it have to ever flip a physically fair coin which would come up heads?
I don’t think the vast majority of people in this comments section realize coins aren’t inherently random.
the human-created source code must be defining a learning algorithm of some sort. And then that learning algorithm will figure out for itself that tires are usually black etc. Might this learning algorithm be simple and legible? Yes! But that was true for GPT-3 too
Simple first-order learning algorithms have types of patterns they recognize, and meta-learning algorithms also have types of patterns they like.
In order to make a friendly or aligned AI, we will have to have some insight into what types of patterns we are going to have it recognize, and separately what types of things it is going to like or find salient.
There was a simple calculation protocol which generated GPT-3. The part that was not simple was translating that into predicting its preferences or perceptual landscape, and hence what it would do after it was turned on. And if you can’t predict how a parameter will respond to input, you can’t architect it one-shot.
I’m laboriously manually Google-translating Lorenz’s Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels from 1935, since I haven’t been able to find an existing English translation of the complete work and don’t have reliable OCR.
Rewarding passage [ boldface mine ]:
In contrast to these individually directed eliciting schemas, the innate ones are built into a complete, species-specific functional plan from the outset, in which it is determined in advance which characteristics are essential. Therefore, it only corresponds to the principle of parsimony if as few characteristics as possible are included in the eliciting schemas. For the sea urchin Sphaerechinus, it is sufficient if its exceptionally highly specialized combined flight and defense reaction against its main enemy, the starfish Asterias, is triggered by a single, specific chemical stimulus emanating from this starfish. Such triggering of a highly motorically complex behavior adapted to a very specific biological process by a single stimulus, or at least by a series of reactions, is characteristic. One would initially expect that in higher animals, to which we must necessarily attribute a material-objective grasp of the environment based on their other behavior, the object of all instinctual behaviors would also be firmly grasped. This would be considered particularly likely where a conspecific represents the object of the action. Strangely, however, a material identity of the conspecific across multiple functional circuits cannot be demonstrated in very many cases. I believe I can offer an explanation for why the subjective identity of the conspecific as an object of various functional circuits is even less of a biological necessity than that of other instinctual objects.
Even in the highest vertebrates, an object-directed instinctual sequence of actions is often triggered by a very small selection of the stimuli emanating from its object, not by its overall material image. When several functional circuits have the same object as their object, it can happen that each of these circuits responds to entirely different stimuli emanating from the same object. The innate triggering schema of an instinctual action selects, so to speak, a small selection from the abundance of stimuli emanating from its object, to which it selectively responds, thus initiating the action. The simplicity of these innate triggering schemas of different instinctual actions can result in two of them not sharing a single stimulus data that triggers their response, even though they are directed at the same object. Normally, the species-specific object sends all stimuli belonging to both schemas together. In experiments, however, the triggering schemas, which precisely because of their great simplicity can often be triggered by artificially presenting appropriate stimulus combinations, can be triggered by two different objects, thus achieving a separation of the two functional circuits directed at one object. Conversely, for the same reasons, one object can trigger two opposing, biologically meaningful reactions only with two separate objects. This is particularly common in those instinctual actions whose object is a conspecific. For example, in various species of ducks, the mother’s defensive reaction can also be triggered by the cry for help of young of different species. Other caretaking reactions, on the other hand, are highly species-specific and tied to very specific coloration and marking patterns on the head and back of the offspring. Thus, it is understandable if a mallard leading her young courageously rescues a Turk’s chick calling for help from danger and, in the next moment, due to the lack of the mallard-specific head and back markings that trigger further care, “unspecifically fusses” at it, i.e., attacks and kills it as a “foreign animal near its own chicks.”
Re ‘?’ react:
As I’ve increasingly noticed of late, and contrary to beliefs earlier in my career about the psychological unity of humankind [ inline link mine ], not all human beings have all the human emotions. The logic of sexual reproduction makes it unlikely that anyone will have a new complex piece of mental machinery that nobody else has… but absences of complex machinery aren’t just possible; they’re amazingly common.
[ . . . ]
If you’re not around people who talk explicitly about the possibility of asexuality, you might not even realize you’re asexual and that there is a distinct “sexual attraction” emotion you are missing, just like some people with congenital anosmia never realize that they don’t have a sense of smell.
Many people seem to be the equivalent of asexual with respect to the emotion of status regulation—myself among them.
[ — Inadequate Equilibria ]
[ earlier Facebook post introducing status-blindness concept ]
I knew you had to have some kind of magic-related rationalization for the PG-motivated preemptive redaction of Quirrell’s sexuality back in 2009 before you knew ace people existed, but WoG-ing that after you learn ace people actually exist and didn’t do anything wrong to be like this, doesn’t feel like the move.
Possibly relatedly, can you speak on why you deleted your old “Headcanon accepted” comment under Harry Potter and the Methods of Catgirls?
When visual inputs are fed into the auditory cortices of infant ferrets, those auditory cortices develop into functional visual systems.
This does not mean the auditory cortex is forming anything like the map the visual cortex would have formed, given “the same” inputs. This is not important for determining whether the cortex is, in some sense, equipotent in quantity compute per surface area, but it is important for determining whether the cortex is uniform.
for example, cats exposed only to horizontal edges early in life don’t have the ability to discern vertical edges later in life. This suggests that our capacities for sensory processing stem from some sort of general-purpose data processing, rather than innate machinery handed to us by evolution.
The brain is very plastic early in life, in the sense that axons which are not receiving feedback from Neuron X can simply physically reroute and terminate on Neuron Y instead—which is why occipital-lobe injuries that would result in large permanent blind spots in adults do not have the same effect on young children. However, I doubt that, e.g., the auditory cortices of the aforementioned ferrets, were simply “reprogrammed” to do the same kind of horizontal/vertical edge detection that infant mammals learn to do natively. In general, if you can block it during infant development and the adult can’t recover it, it’s nature, not nurture.
There’s a man who had the entire left half of his brain removed when he was 5, who has above-average intelligence, and went on to graduate college and maintain steady employment.
Split-brain miracles are up to the aforementioned child plasticity plus the fact that, generally, the cortical hemispheres are symmetrically duplicated in function like the lungs. People can also survive well after the removal of 1 lung, even though the remaining lung can’t change or adapt in any way [ except maybe passively hypertrophying ] to “take over” the function of the missing lung. Removing a child’s entire [ occipital / orbitofrontal / temporal ] cortex—even if you rerouted the relevant sensory input elsewhere—would have devastating effects on cognition/personality that could not be recovered by the remaining cortical areas, just like adult injury.
Update: The new GP took one look in my ear and said, and I quote, “You have a lot of . . . infection!”
And was baffled that urgent care hadn’t given me antibiotics.
I imagine it had gotten significantly worse over those few days [ it had subjectively ], as I hadn’t been able to stay supplied with garlic.
I’m now on doxycycline 200mg/day; Google says ear infections are usually caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, and that this strain in America is resistant to tetracyclines around 1⁄5 of the time. But new GP said if it didn’t work to come back and he’d try something else.
So barring further complications I seem to finally be in the clear.
New doc has been in the area for a while but doesn’t look/talk like he’s from around here; I would hazard a guess that’s why he was a lucky roll.
No tissue samples, just external examination. Not even bothering to guess at a cause. “ETD → use steroids to treat”.
If the new GP acknowledges that I have signs of ETD and that it must be caused by something, and that something is probably not allergies [ otherwise the steroids plus azelastine plus certrizine would likely have done anything long-term, and/or I would have any other signs of seasonal allergies to speak of ], that’ll be mission accomplished. So I’m trying to brainstorm ways to force him to acknowledge that syndromes have causes, which is not a standard most doctors I’ve ever talked with in this great state of Iowa have met.
I don’t know what you mean by “specifically requesting the differential diagnoses”. Care to elaborate?
I just had a conversation with an urgent care doc. I told the office I had a new ear infection, so they wouldn’t look at my previous doctor’s notes saying I’d been “somatizing” the ETD, and in the hopes that letting them come to the conclusion themselves would prevent them from having an allergic reaction to a patient’s “self-diagnosis”.
That worked, insofar as the doctor said he saw inflammation in my nasal passages and lymph nodes that looked like ETD. He explained what that was, and said I should try a nasal steroid. I said I’d tried two kinds [ Flonase and Nasacort ] and I’d been taking them for seven months, and the problem just kept getting worse. He said I should try a third kind of nasal steroid. I asked if I could try an antibiotic. He said no, he hadn’t seen any signs of infection, and thus he couldn’t conscion the risk of antibiotic resistance. I begged as sanely-sounding as I could. I said “I don’t have allergies [ that could be causing the ETD ]”, but he didn’t seem interested in determining the cause of the ETD in the first place. He said no three times to my request to try an antibiotic, and repeatedly said “Steroids are the treatment for ETD”.
I now have a follow-up with my new GP on Thursday. If you know magic words I can say to make that go better, I give you the floor.
I genuinely do not have the money at the moment to get my head scanned or pursue other options without a referral, unfortunately.
You know the phenomenon where men tend to score higher on mathematics tests and women tend to score higher on tests of verbal ability?
That’s because men have more real estate allocated to the space-processing cortical areas, while women have relatively more space allocated to the verbal-associative cortical areas. The two cortical areas aren’t morphologically-functionally adaptable or interchangeable. They genuinely do different things, and they trade off with each other for space in your skull. It’s said that Einstein had massive parietal lobes on autopsy; it’s also said he was somewhat dyslexic. It would make sense to me if both of those were true.
I’ve never met a “glance at a plate and see that there are 163 peas on it” type savant, but I’ve met “autistic geniuses”, and the reality of that group of neurotypes seems pretty well recognized by normies who have little reason to make stuff up about it. Maybe you doubt the most extreme tales of savantism [ why? ] but dismissing marginal savantism as an artifact of practice is missing the forest.
I’m saying that the way I apprehend, or reflexively relate to, my past or present experiences, as belonging to “myself”, is revealing of reflective access, which itself is suggestive of reflective storage.
If a hypothetical being never even silently apprehended an experience as theirs, that hypothetical being doesn’t sound conscious. I personally have no memories of being conscious but not being able to syntactically describe my experiences, but as far as I understand infant development that’s a phase, and it seems logically possible anyway.
you can get an elective MRI of your head if you really want to see what’s going on in there
Ha, I’ve been trying to get my head scanned for four years. Haven’t even come close to getting anyone to take me that seriously. Thank you, though.
Second, consider simulating fever
. . . Huh, that is a new one to me, thanks! I’ve been hanging out in the heat recently, so that’s convenient. I’ll see if it improves anything.
have you noticed any change in symptoms when taking antihistamines for other reasons
I’m actually taking certrizine, too, because I was prescribed that as well [ 80% of the doctors insisted it had to be allergies [ even though I don’t have allergies ] or else neurological [ makes little sense IMO ] ]. If the certrizine has an effect, it’s smaller than the effect of the antibiotics, garlic, and steroids.
prompted Claude (preferably Opus) to strategize with you for how to tell the truth from the specific angle that causes medical professionals to pay attention
This suggestion makes a lot of sense, thank you. Idk if you read either of my accounts of what went wrong [ Part 1 [google doc] ], [ Part 2 [blog post] ], but I [ perhaps arrogantly ] pride myself that I’m better at this than even Claude, for the moment.
[ These seem like real medical answers to me. ]
Whatever happened to holding software companies to the standard of not rolling vulnerable user data into their widely distributed business logic?Say AI companies could effectively make copying hard enough to provide security benefits to scrape-ees [ if I’m reading you right, that’s approximately who you’re trying to protect ]. Say also that this “easy-to-copy” property of AIs, is “the fundamental” thing expected increase the demand for AI labor relative to human labor. . . . Hard-alignment-problem-complete problem specification, no?